


Between the Tongue and the Taste

by philalethia



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, Blood Drinking, Blood and Gore, Bloodplay, Daddy Kink, Daddy Sherlock, First Time, M/M, Vampire Sex, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-01
Updated: 2015-10-01
Packaged: 2018-04-24 08:53:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4913104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/philalethia/pseuds/philalethia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Sherlock was right about one thing at least: John was thinking about writing up the case. But he didn’t know what he would say, where he would even start. <em>We went after Ed Harvey, I got myself gutted, and Sherlock changed me so I wouldn’t die? It’s all right, I suppose, except that vampire hierarchy is apparently even wonkier than everyone says and nothing’s quite as sexual as those awful vampire films make it seem?</em>”</p><p>In which John gets turned into a vampire and everything gets a bit weird.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Between the Tongue and the Taste

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: Beware of daddy kink, gore, sexualized violence, and animal cruelty (in a vampires-toying-with-their-food way). If you think any of that may be distressing or triggering, I strongly advise you not to read.

“No,” said John. “Not a chance.”

The edge in his tone might’ve been a bit more threatening, he supposed, if he weren’t reclined in a hospital bed in the early stages of death, a heart monitor beeping increasingly weakly to his right. As it was, Sherlock only cocked his head and blinked rapidly—one of his favourite ways to indicate that he thought John was being ridiculous and he had no intention of listening to a word John said.

“Why not?”

Sighing, John pushed his dinner tray away. The only thing on it was a plastic cup of blood with a little bendy straw, and the reek of it was making him nauseated. Knowing that it would eventually smell appetising made him even more so.

“Because you’re not, for one,” he said.

Sitting in the chair next to the bed, just in front of the heart monitor, Sherlock frowned and raised his chin. John barrelled ahead to divert the incoming lecture.

“In _human_ terms, you’re not. And you vampires might have the entire ‘childe’ rubbish—”

“Ugh!” Sherlock threw himself backwards so hard his chair rocked. “Not the e. You know I can’t stand the e.”

“There’s literally no difference in how it’s pronounced, Sherlock. Child, childe, it sounds the same.”

“Of course there’s a difference. You just can’t hear it.” He covered his face with his hand as though physically pained by John’s perfectly sensible logic. “It’s archaic and pompous, and it should’ve fallen out of favour centuries ago.” His hand dropped, and he fixed John with a squinty stare. “ _What_ , then? Can’t be Dad or Da; the association with your human father is still too strong. Hmm… Daddy?”

John recoiled. “God no. That’s even worse than Father. It’s—there are certain connotations with that one.”

Sherlock shook his head a bit, tightening his lips. “Then what will you call me?”

“Oh I dunno. I sort of thought I might call you Sherlock. Like I’ve been doing for the last four years.”

Sherlock was going to argue. John could see it on his stupidly attractive face, the way he sucked in a sharp breath through his nose even though he didn’t need to breathe to speak (he probably thought it made him seem dramatic, the berk), and John had long since tired of this conversation.

He rested his palm on his abdomen, where a matter of hours ago he had been split open by a cornered, panicked blood smuggler and his entrails has been preparing to spill out. The knife wound had long since healed, his internal organs put to rights, and the blood mopped up. They’d probably send him home soon if only his heart would bloody stop already; he barely even needed to breathe anymore.

Sherlock’s eyes followed the movement. His expression went stony. “I—”

“No,” John said. “You did this to me, remember? You dragged me to that warehouse. You stopped me ringing Greg. You let Ed Harvey get away after we’d spent two weeks hunting him down. You didn’t even give me a choice before you made me into this. So sod your complicated vampire bullshit and shut up.”

Sherlock shut up. His mouth closed with a clack of his teeth just as something in John’s chest gave a sudden, sickly lurch.

To his right, the monitor began to wail.

*

It shouldn’t have been possible—he was technically dead now, after all—but John felt worse after.

His entire sense of balance was shot to hell, and his limbs were stiff and shaky. So much for vampire strength. He only made it up the staircase and into the flat with Sherlock shouldering most of his weight, half dragging him. John tried not to be obvious about sniffing him, but up close, his cologne always smelt divine: heavy and posh and with a hint of spice to it.

 _Down, boy_ , he thought. _Really not the time for it._

Once they were inside, Sherlock deposited John into his armchair without so much as a grunt of exertion, the show-off, and promptly swept off to the kitchen while John gripped the chair arms and dropped his head back.

He had an awful metallic taste in his mouth, and everything seemed… wrong. Like a broken television, the colours and sounds were off. It would’ve been nice if kicking something would make it all right again, just like with the telly.

From the kitchen came a bang and a thud. John turned and peered into the adjacent room, where Sherlock was doing his best impression of a cyclone. He hadn’t removed his coat, and it billowed and flapped as he hurried back and forth between the open cupboard above the sink and the rubbish bin he’d apparently hauled to the middle of the room.

“What the hell are you doing?” John said.

Sherlock didn’t even glance at him as he tossed three cans of soup and a package of biscuits into the bin. “Emptying the cupboards. Obviously. No point having food in the kitchen that neither of us can eat.”

“You don’t have to get rid of it all now. You certainly don’t have to bin it. Oi!”

Sherlock froze, clutching two boxes of tea: one opened, only two bags away from being empty, and the other brand-new, still covered in plastic.

“I’m not going to sit here and watch you throw away perfectly good tea.” With some effort, John tried to heave himself to his feet, only for a wave of vertigo to knock him back on his arse. There was no chance Sherlock would believe he’d meant to do that, but John decided to pretend he had done anyway. He swivelled around and scowled at Sherlock over the back of his chair. “If nothing else, we could give it to Mrs Hudson.”

“The sooner it’s out of the flat, the better,” said Sherlock. “You’ll start to feel thirsty soon, but your palate won’t have changed yet. You’ll try to eat and drink what you did before, and you’ll make yourself sick.”

 _Make yourself sick_. Like John was a child as well as a childe—and bugger what Sherlock said, the e added a necessary distinction and you couldn’t hear it spoken. Like John needed someone else to look after his health.

He gritted his teeth and lifted his chin high in defiance. “I’m not going to eat something I know I can’t digest. Now put the tea down. I’ll take it to Mrs Hudson in the morning.”

*

At half four, half awake and starving, John stumbled down to the kitchen, made himself a cup of tea, and spent the next hour in the loo regretting it with every fibre of his being.

When his body had expelled everything it could, including a few thick spews of blood, he left the toilet to find all the lights in the sitting room turned on and Sherlock in his usual armchair. His blue silk dressing gown was askew, his dark hair dishevelled and sticking up in the back. There were pillow creases on one of his cheeks, and he had yesterday’s newspaper open in his lap.

There was also, John saw as he came closer, a mug full of dark liquid on the table beside John’s chair. And as soon as he’d seen it, he could smell it as well. The tang of blood, as strong and foul as the metallic taste in his mouth had been hours before.

John felt his fangs emerge: an uncomfortable sensitivity in his gums, followed by a sensation like he had four large bits of food stuck between his lips and his teeth.

Sherlock glanced up as he approached, and one eyebrow slowly arched.

“Not a fucking word,” John said. His voice was hoarse. His throat felt even drier than it had when he’d first woke.

Sherlock’s other eyebrow joined the first, and he calmly turned a page in the paper.

John sat with a sigh and reached for the mug, which was warm in his hand. Sherlock must’ve popped it in the microwave. He took a sip and gagged slightly as he swallowed. But almost immediately his throat felt less dry, his hunger less overwhelming.

“Seriously, not a word,” he said, and pretended not to notice that the corner of Sherlock’s soft, pink lips twitched when John took another sip.

*

“Get up,” said Sherlock, startling John from what seemed the deepest stage of sleep he’d ever experienced.

He had to claw himself to wakefulness, and even then he still didn’t feel awake. There was a thick fog in his mind, dark pulsing blotches in his vision. His eyelids drooped despite his best efforts to keep them open, and he nearly dipped back into sleep.

“ _John!_ ”

Sherlock’s voice was booming this time, accompanied by a great shake of John’s bed that jolted him not-quite-awake again. His sheets were swiftly yanked out of reach.

“Up, get up! I won’t have you turning into a useless stereotype who only wakes when the sun goes down. There are entirely too many of those as it is. _Up!_ ”

Sherlock gripped John under his armpits and hefted. It was surprisingly easy to forget sometimes, when Sherlock did things like get tangled in his dressing gown and fall flat on his face after he’d made a lunge for something, that as a centuries-old vampire his strength was astounding. Although John purposely kept himself as limp as a dead fish, Sherlock lifted him from the bed as though he weighed no more than a towel, dropped him onto his feet, and forcibly kept him standing when his knees gave a wobble and nearly buckled.

 _The things he could do with that strength_ , John thought groggily, then cut off the rest of that thought before it could send his mind down avenues it really shouldn’t be travelling. Sherlock was above sex; he’d said so multiple times. To think of him like that anyway was… well, it wasn’t good. Not good at all.

“There,” Sherlock said, sounding deeply pleased. “A day or two more of this, and you’ll adjust.”

John groaned. His eyelids still felt dreadfully heavy, but he managed to remain upright and more or less alert when Sherlock let go and stepped away.

“I’ve informed Mrs Hudson that if she hasn’t heard from you in—hm, thirteen minutes now—she should bring her air horn when she checks on you.”

John hadn’t even known Mrs Hudson owned an air horn. He blinked and swayed and tried to convince his mouth to work.

“Where—where’re you going?”

“Blood clinic. We’ll be needing twice the blood we used to.”

And with that, Sherlock spun round and left. His quick, half-stomping descent down the stairs echoed through the quiet stairway.

John gave his bed one last lingering look, along with the sheets Sherlock had tossed in a haphazard pile on the floor, before he followed.

*

“You’ve still got quite a bit of colour at least,” Mrs Hudson said when John hauled the contents of his and Sherlock’s kitchen cupboards down to her flat.

She’d just finished breakfast. The scent of eggs on toast and Irish breakfast tea with sugar was still strong in the kitchen, and her stomach was gurgling loudly enough that it drowned out the sounds of her heart valves and the air whistling through her nose hairs.

John’s hearing hadn’t been so keen when he’d gone to bed; he was sure of it. Yet when he’d visited the loo to splash cold water on his face, in hopes that it would wake him up more (it had), he’d been able to hear Mrs Hudson in the loo beneath his and Sherlock’s, passing wind and then having an impressively long piss.

It had been more than enough to make him wonder what sorts of things Sherlock had been unwittingly privy to over the years they’d been flatmates without John knowing.

“I must say, you’re adjusting remarkably well,” Mrs Hudson said, sitting across the kitchen table from John. “Is it not very different? Being—” She gestured vaguely in the air. “—like that?”

It wasn’t, really, John supposed. He said as much, and Mrs Hudson smiled.

“That’s good. I’d worried about that, when Sherlock phoned yesterday and said what had happened. That you wouldn’t be… you anymore, you know,” Mrs Hudson said. “But it’s also something of a relief, to be honest. I worried how he would handle it when you eventually…. I mean, relationships between humans and vampires aren’t really long-term for a vampire, are they?”

John stared. How many times had they had a similar sort of conversation? He was beginning to suspect she was misunderstanding on purpose. “No, Mrs Hudson, we’re not like that. He—”

There was a sudden sound of footsteps approaching rapidly on the pavement outside, followed by a whish and slam of the front door. Speak of the devil.

“I know, dear,” Mrs Hudson was saying, “but I really do think—”

John raised a hand with one finger pointed, effectively cutting her off, just as Sherlock mounted the stairs and clambered noisily up them.

“That’s Sherlock,” he said, and stood to leave.

*

By the looks, Sherlock had bought every blood bag in the clinic, certainly more than twice what he usually bought. The cooler he’d used to transport it all was full to the brim, and he was stuffing them one by one into every available empty space in the fridge.

John had only been standing in the kitchen entrance for a second or two, watching, before Sherlock whipped around with a blood bag in hand, which he shoved in John’s direction.

“Here. You need to drink.”

John made a face. “I’m fine. I’m not hungry.”

“Thirsty. It’s thirst, not hunger.”

John called up his memory of when he’d woken up the previous night. No, it had definitely felt like hunger, not thirst, and anyway, all the medical literature used the terms interchangeably. “What’s the difference?”

Sherlock huffed as though his patience was being tried terribly. “Hunger comes after thirst. It—ugh, never mind. You’ll know it when you experience it.”

Sherlock shoved the bag towards him again, more forcefully, and John decided to accept it rather than be punched in the chest with it. Predictably, the bag was cold and wet with condensation, and its contents sloshed a bit.

“You’re a doctor,” said Sherlock. “You know the human body always wakes dehydrated; it’s no different for us. Five bags a day should be a good place to start. We can adjust if we need to.”

“Five bags a day? That’s rich, coming from you.”

Sherlock who often went so long without blood that his skin turned greyish, his fangs were perpetually exposed, and his eyes glowed. Not to mention that when he reached that point he also tended to stare so intently and blatantly _hungry_ —or thirsty, or whatever Sherlock wanted to call it—that people shuffled the opposite direction on the Tube and parents herded their children as far away as possible. Even on a good day John wasn’t sure he’d ever seen Sherlock empty five whole bags of blood.

“I’ve had more than two centuries to learn my limits,” Sherlock said. “You’ve had a matter of hours. And the last thing either of us wants, I’m sure, is for you to get hungry.”

John had been hungry, as far as he was concerned, but it wasn’t worth arguing over. “Pretty sure I can learn my limits myself, thanks. I’m in my forties, not four.”

“Which to me is as good as a four-year-old,” Sherlock snapped. “For a vampire, you’re a child.”

“And you’re my mum, are you?” John snapped right back, and realised only after he’d said it what he’d just walked into.

Sherlock puffed his chest, the way he did when he thought he was about to be terribly impressive. “No. Obviously I’m y—”

“Don’t,” John said sharply. “Don’t even think about saying it.”

Sherlock rolled his eyes. “Oh for god’s sake. Just drink.”

John glanced down at the blood bag, turning it over in his hands. _AB negative_ , said the label. When he looked back up, Sherlock was heaving a sigh of disgust and swiping the bag from John’s grasp.

“Yes, fine,” he said, sounding utterly put-upon. “I’ll show you. The first thing you’ll want to do is put it in something. There are some vampires who prefer to drink it straight from the bag, but….” Sherlock wrinkled his nose, leaving John no doubt what he thought of those vampires. “You won’t be one of them.”

He fetched a clean glass from the cupboard and tore open a corner of the blood bag with his teeth. Immediately John could smell it and felt his top fangs begin to drop. He saw that Sherlock’s had as well and also that he’d got a tiny smear of blood just below his lip, which he licked absently off as he poured half the bag into the glass.

When that was done, Sherlock popped the glass into the microwave. “It tastes better warm. Thirty seconds should do it. Certainly nothing over a minute, and _never_ boil it. Boiled blood is revolting.”

“It sounds it,” John said.

Sherlock shot him an impish look as the microwave whirred, sounding like a freight train with John’s new hearing abilities. Sherlock was cheerful, John realised. He was bouncing slightly on his toes and practically vibrating while they waited.

“You’re enjoying this,” said John. “You had your little huff at first, but you actually like that you have to teach me all this.”

Sherlock’s only acknowledgement was a tiny upwards twitch of his lip. When the microwave dinged, he removed the glass and handed it to John.

The heat had certainly improved the smell. In fact, it smelt almost… well, perhaps not _good_ , exactly, but not altogether unappetising, at least. John drank. Slowly at first, just a sip. Then his stomach gave an almighty groan, his fangs grew long enough that they scraped the inside of his mouth and tapped the glass, and John was tipping his head back and effortlessly draining it.

When he lowered the glass, he found Sherlock staring at him and licking a thick streak of red from his thumb. He must’ve stuck it into the open bag he was still holding and gathered a bit of blood.

 _So much for putting it in something first,_ John thought. He smacked his lips, drawing Sherlock’s attention to his mouth, where it stayed.

Vampires drinking vampire blood—for sustenance or for… other things—wasn’t unheard of, John knew, but surely Sherlock wasn’t contemplating it when he had an open blood bag in his hands and a full cooler of more at his feet. Of course, the only other option that occurred to John was equally unlikely. And really, really not a good idea to dwell on.

Sherlock blinked and the odd moment was broken.

“Right,” said Sherlock, looking away. “Good. You can heat up the rest on your own.”

He thrust the half-full bag towards John and went back to putting the rest into the fridge.

*

“Don’t use the e,” Sherlock said, pacing behind where John was sat at his computer. He’d switched his full suit for a pair of pyjamas and a dressing gown. His shirt was inside out, as it often was. John wondered if that had to do with vampirism or just Sherlock’s individual eccentricities.

“Sorry?” said John.

“You’re thinking about writing up the case. If you do, and if you decide to disclose your change of species, only use ‘child’ without an e.”

 _Fairly certain I will never, ever use the word ‘child’ to describe myself,_ John thought wryly. Aloud he said, “Oh, really? Because I thought I might have a paragraph of nothing but the word ‘childe’ repeated one hundred times to commemorate the occasion. Like a poem.”

“That would certainly be up to your usual standard of poetry,” Sherlock said, and smirked widely when John snorted.

He was right about one thing at least: John was thinking about writing up the case. But he didn’t know what he would say, where he would even start. _We went after Ed Harvey, I got myself gutted, and Sherlock changed me so I wouldn’t die? It’s all right, I suppose, except that vampire hierarchy is apparently even wonkier than everyone says and nothing’s quite as sexual as those awful vampire films make it seem?_

On second thought, maybe not a blog post today. John closed the internet browser and set his computer aside.

*

“I hear congratulations are in order” was the first thing that Mycroft said when he inevitably darkened their doorstep. It was always something of a toss-up whether his smiles were genuine or feigned, and the one he wore now seemed to John a bit of both.

“You could’ve just, you know, sent a card,” said John.

“Still could,” Sherlock piped up. “Just pop back outside, and we’ll pretend you were never here.”

As he always seemed to do when his brother showed up, he’d fetched his violin and was plucking idly at the strings. With John’s improved hearing, the notes lingered longer in the air, so that it sounded like at least two people were playing simultaneously. It was lovely, not at all the sort of thing you did if you were trying to drive someone away.

For once, Mycroft paid Sherlock little attention and fixed his gaze instead on John. Unlike Sherlock’s scrutiny, which was keen and probing but rarely made John uncomfortable anymore, Mycroft’s was utterly unforgiving. John might’ve been a fish on a carving board, waiting to be flayed.

“He looks tired,” Mycroft said eventually. Because he still didn’t take his eyes from John, it was a moment before John realised it wasn’t him who was being addressed. “Please tell me you didn’t force him out of bed this morning to accommodate your little quirks.”

“Little quirks that you share,” said Sherlock.

“Yes, but I don’t impose them on anyone else.” Mycroft’s gaze flickered downwards, and John had the ridiculous urge to wrap his arms protectively around himself. “His colour’s good, at least. How often have you been feeding him?”

Which was quite enough for John. “Oi! I am still in the room, thanks.”

“Indeed,” Sherlock said, looking down at his violin strings with a little smirk. “Piss off, Mycroft.”

Mycroft rolled his eyes and shifted his weight. “I’m only showing concern for the newest member of our—” Squinting, he moved his jaw from side to side as though scouring his mind for a phrase John would be capable of understanding. “—family,” he decided on eventually.

And with an opening like that, how could John resist? “Does that make you my Uncle Mycroft?” he asked, perfectly deadpan. “Or would you prefer Uncle Mike?”

Mycroft peered at John as though he was trying to decide whether it was worth the trouble of squashing him like an insect. John glanced at Sherlock, whose little smirk had grown to a grin so wide it seemed to split his face in two. A puff of pride warmed John’s chest, and he fought a grin of his own.

“What do you think, Daddy?” he said.

Mycroft’s eyebrows flew halfway up his forehead, and then John and Sherlock were catching each other’s eyes and giggling like children. Sherlock’s violin plucking faltered and then stopped completely.

“Will neither of you ever simply grow up?” Mycroft said, exasperated.

John gathered himself again with some effort. “I wouldn’t hold out much hope. Apparently I’m a four-year-old now, and I’ve got _him_ as a father.”

“Tell Mummy we’ll visit when things are more… settled,” said Sherlock. He positioned the violin on his shoulder and took up his bow. “That’s why you’re actually here, I assume?”

With a heavy sigh, Mycroft turned to leave. “A phone call every now and again wouldn’t go amiss. When you don’t return her calls, then _I_ have to hear about it.”

A noise came from Sherlock’s violin then unlike anything John had ever heard: an ear-piercing screech, the sort that should’ve been able to shatter glass. John flinched and recoiled, and Mycroft hastened his pace out the door and down the staircase. Sherlock stopped as soon as the front door had shut behind him.

“Christ,” John said, appalled. “That was awful.”

“He is, isn’t he?” said Sherlock. “Thank god we never shared genes.”

*

“Up, John!” Sherlock shouted, and this time John actually managed on the first try.

Or, at least, he managed before Sherlock grew tired of shouting and lifted him bodily out of bed by his underarms. He sat up, more than a little groggy, and kicked the sheets off so that Sherlock wouldn’t think he meant to go back to sleep and rip them off and toss them on the floor again.

To his surprise, the sleep fog began to dissipate quickly and was replaced with a fierce, all-consuming thirst. His mouth was so dry his tongue was like paper and the walls of his oesophagus felt as though they’d shrivelled and collapsed. He couldn’t even swallow.

Even stranger was that the thought of water, ice-cold and clean, made his stomach turn and the thought of blood, warm and thick, made him dizzy with desire.

 _Well_ , he thought, _you knew it would happen sometime, didn’t you? No point being surprised about it._

“Up,” Sherlock said again. “Lestrade phoned.”

John said the first thing that popped into his mind. “Did they find Harvey?”

Sherlock cocked his head in a way that told John he was being judged rather harshly for that question. “Lestrade working a blood smuggling case? Of course not. There’s been a body found in a flat in Hackney. I’ll give you time to drink and have a shower if you’re quick about it. Otherwise, I’m leaving you behind.”

“No,” said John. Christ, it sounded like he’d been gargling gravel. He climbed unsteadily off the bed. “I’ll be quick.”

Sherlock was already gone, although John heard him pause at the top of the stairs and turn back. He popped his head into John’s room. There was a downwards curl to his ridiculously lush lips.

“Be sure to bundle up,” he said before his head popped out of view again.

*

John understood why as soon as he’d left the flat, the first time he’d done so since he’d been released from hospital. Understood, too, why Sherlock wore his thick coat and scarf even during summer. Not that John necessarily hadn’t understood before. He was a doctor, after all, and vampire skin was notoriously sensitive to sunlight.

But he hadn’t imagined it would feel quite like this.

Like a full-body sunburn: a sensation of heat rising in waves off his skin and a scraping pain every time his clothes shifted. His face, neck, and hands, the only bare parts of him, were worse. There was a feeling like his skin was blistering and pussing, even breaking open, yet when he investigated, he found nothing.

“It’ll get better,” Sherlock said in the taxi. “Less pain, more of a general discomfort. Your tolerance for it will improve as well.”

“Oh, lovely,” John bit out. The cab windows helped tremendously, but his mood was still quite foul. “Brilliant. Exactly the sort of life I want.”

Sherlock’s jaw clenched. Then in a flurry of movement, he was unravelling the scarf from around his neck and holding it out to John.

“Um,” John said.

Sherlock’s voice was low and waspish when he answered. “It won’t get rid of the discomfort, obviously. But it’ll help.”

“I’m not wearing your scarf to a crime scene.”

Just as quickly as he’d unwound it, Sherlock wrapped the scarf around John’s throat, using it to hold John still when he tried to jerk instinctively away. The fabric smelt of cologne and hair product and a hint of old, dried blood. Before John could stop himself, he was sucking in as much of the scent as he could, squeezing his eyes shut as a wave of thirst-hunger-whatever struck—absurdly strong, considering he’d just emptied a blood bag less than a half hour ago.

When he opened his eyes again, he saw that Sherlock was staring at his own hands, which were fussing with the scarf like he might do a suit before a black tie event. The whole thing struck John as either terribly romantic or terribly paternal. He wasn’t sure which of the two he preferred.

Well, at least he knew which he could make light of.

“Thanks, Daddy,” he said, dry as the Sahara.

Sherlock’s lips curled into an amused grin, and he retreated back to his side of the taxi. “If it gets too uncomfortable, you can cover part of your face as well.”

They were silent the rest of the ride.

*

The murder was brutal: a human so badly mauled that not even their gender could be determined by sight, much less their identity. Not for certain, anyway, although the chances it was the inhabitant of the flat it had been discovered in were probably quite high.

“Landlord found it,” said Greg, as Sherlock circled the carnage like a pacing tiger, slipping on a pair of latex gloves. “One of the neighbours complained about the smell. I’m surprised it was only the one.”

The smell was considerable. Several members of Greg’s team were covering their noses and mouths and looking as though they were about to be ill. To John, though, it smelled… good. Alarmingly tantalising.

“Anyway, since this is right up your street—”

“Why is it right up my street?” said Sherlock. He snapped the gloves dramatically and knelt down beside the body. What was left of the body, anyway. A vaguely human-shaped mass of bones, torn flesh, and organs that had clearly been ripped open and gnawed on.

 _Oh, god_ , John thought. His fangs had lengthened. He wanted to plunge his hands into the mess and then lick them clean.

“Well.” Greg folded his arms. “Werewolf, isn’t it?”

“Oh it’s meant to look like one, yes,” said Sherlock. “The night after a full moon, the jagged bit of silver here like the killer broke a silver chain to commit this. Silver coating, I should say. Pure silver chains are exceptionally difficult to obtain. But no, this was a human’s work. You can tell by the smell. That’s human saliva; a werewolf doesn’t have nearly as much bacteria.” He looked up, triumph in his expression, and his gaze flickered to John. “Can you smell it yet?”

No, John really fucking couldn’t. All he could smell was the blood, the flesh, the death. It was spreading through his consciousness like a miasma, tinting his vision a dullish red. His eyelids fluttered closed, and behind them, John saw himself sinking his teeth into the already partially eaten liver and tearing off a piece for himself. Holding it on his tongue, sucking the remaining blood from the tissue, spitting it out and tearing off another.

“John?” said Sherlock. He sounded calm, eerily so. The sort of calm he got right before he did something spectacularly stupid, like taunt an armed criminal or flirt with an enraged demon. John responded to that tone like nothing else, because it usually meant Sherlock was about to get himself maimed. “Wait for me outside. I’ll only be a moment.”

“Christ,” Greg said. “Sorry, mate. I’m so used to Sherlock, I didn’t even think…. Too soon?”

John opened his eyes, fixating on Greg’s expression of concern and sympathy. He hadn’t moved at all even though everyone else on his team was backing away, lowering their hands from their noses to cover their necks protectively. Their heartbeats throbbed in John’s ears, their blood—

“Yeah,” John said. “Too soon. ‘Scuse me.”

*

He sat on the steps outside, as much in the shade as he could be, and waited for the impending bloodlust to pass. He’d known it would be bad, of course; during his residency, then again in Afghanistan, he’d seen a vampire in the throes of it.

But he never imagined it would be this… violent, this all-consuming.

That was starting to become a bit of a pattern, wasn’t it?

There was the approach of footsteps behind him, and the same scent that clung to the scarf around his neck grew stronger.

“It won’t always be like that, if you were concerned,” said Sherlock, as John rose to his feet and brushed off his trousers. “Nor will it come on so suddenly. Must be a growth spurt.”

John sputtered. “A growth spurt? Are you serious?”

“We’ll increase your blood intake to seven or eight bags for the time being.”

“A growth spurt. Fucking hell.” He hurried after Sherlock, who had already taken off down the pavement. “Is that what it’s actually called, or are you still trying to get me to think of myself as your child and call you Daddy?”

Sherlock stopped and turned. “‘Child,’” he said, surprised and approving. “John! You can be taught.”

*

John felt infinitely better with another half bag of blood in his belly, although Sherlock insisted on heating up the other half for good measure. Then, while John sat in his armchair and sipped it slowly, relishing how it seemed to cling to his taste buds and coat his throat in warmth, Sherlock left for Bart’s.

“To pick something up,” he’d said as he put on his coat, and John had long since learned not to push for details. The less he knew about Sherlock’s experiments, the better.

Although he did wonder if maybe Sherlock would leave off on them for a bit now. If nothing else, out of concern that John might lose control and eat one of Sherlock’s experiments if he stumbled upon it in the fridge one day.

 _And to think that only a week ago I got a flu jab and talked myself out of ordering Chinese for dinner for the sake of my arteries_ , John thought.

It occurred to him for the first time then that even if he didn’t end up writing about it on his blog, he should probably tell people. Harry would no doubt be furious John hadn’t told her days ago.

When Sherlock came home, he was carrying a cardboard box. From inside it came a cacophony of scratching-snuffling-squeaking sounds and out-of-sync heartbeats and an odour that reminded John of—

“Rats?” he asked. “You’re doing experiments on animals now?”

“Of a sort.” Sherlock balanced the box on the sofa arm while he took off his coat and scarf. “You will, in any case.”

“Me? What am I doing?”

“I’m going to teach you to hunt.”

Sherlock scooped up the box, sending the rats inside—four of them, judging by the heartbeats—skittering. He carried it into the kitchen. John set down his half-drunk glass of blood and stood to follow.

“Sorry?” Arms folded, John stopped in the entrance and watched as Sherlock scooted his microscope out of the way so he could set the box on the kitchen table. “Why do I need to learn how to hunt?”

“For survival. Obviously. Same as humans.”

 _Almost funny_ , John thought, _how so many of our conversations are both of us thinking the other one is an idiot._

“No,” John said, drawing out the vowel. “Pretty sure hunting and gathering ended in England a few thousand years ago, actually. Now we’ve got these things called supermarkets, you see.”

The look that Sherlock shot him said quite clearly, ‘Stop being an idiot,’ which made John grin. “Learning to kill and extract blood from a living animal is an essential stage of vampire infancy.”

The word ‘infancy’ rankled a bit. “Says who?”

Sherlock huffed dramatically and threw up his arms in a sort of ‘Dear god, look what I have to deal with’ way. “No one _says_ it. It’s just _done_.” He opened the box of scampering, squeaking rats and lifted one out. It was grey and white and utterly dwarfed by Sherlock’s hand, rendering its desperate squirming ineffective.

John wished that he felt ill watching, but instead he felt a bit… hungry.

Rat in hand, Sherlock shut the box again. “When I was just turned,” he said loftily, “my father taught me—”

Understanding dawned. “Oh for—this is about you being some sort of _dad_ to me again, isn’t it? Look, Sherlock, this—I know you’re selectively ignorant about certain aspects of human culture, but feeding me your blood doesn’t make you my father in any sense of the word. You’re my friend,” John said, emphatic. “That’s all.”

Sherlock appeared stricken by that, oddly enough. His eyes went wide and his mouth small. In his grip, the rat went suddenly, eerily quiet, and John realised after a moment that Sherlock was—possibly inadvertently—cutting off its air supply.

“Erm,” said John. “You know you’re—”

There was a muffled _snap!_ and then John could only hear three heartbeats, three little sets of lungs inhaling and exhaling.

“You aren’t human anymore,” Sherlock said, voice low. “Perhaps you should try to be less _selectively ignorant_ of vampire culture.”

John didn’t know what to say to that, and after a brief silence, Sherlock looked down, loosening his grip and letting the dead rat flop from one palm to the other.

“Kill first if you can manage it,” he said, mostly cheerful again. “I admit, there’s—” He breathed in, his eyelids sliding shut. His voice pitched deeper. “There’s nothing quite like feeling something die in your mouth… the slowing pulse against your tongue, but most creatures will fight you, quite viciously, and you’re weakest when you’re feeding.”

John was rather horrified to feel that his fangs were emerging, from nothing but Sherlock’s words and the rising scent of death. Christ, but they were like four little cocks attached to his gums, making themselves known when he’d really rather they didn’t—and wasn’t that an odd image.

“With humans,” Sherlock continued, eyes opening, “never go for the throat while they’re alive. They expect it. The surprise will give you an edge. And anyway, there’s something… more _satisfying_ about the abdomen.”

John remembered the crime scene that morning, how he’d imagined sucking on a bite of a dead person’s liver. He shuddered. His throat tightened, and he felt weak with hunger—and sod what Sherlock said, it definitely felt like hunger, not thirst.

“Go on.” Sherlock held out the rat, first for John to take and then, when John hesitated, up to John’s mouth. John smelt its fur, its saliva, its blood, and beneath all that, Sherlock: his skin and the blood in his veins, sounding like the rush of the Thames on a quiet night. “Go for the abdomen. This one’s a bit small, so you might not be able to avoid biting through bone.”

Sherlock stepped closer, raising his other hand to cup the back of John’s head and coax him forwards until the tip of his nose brushed the rat’s fur. It was disturbing; it was alarming. Not the least of which because Sherlock’s touch seemed intimate, almost sexual.

 _Maybe those awful vampire films aren’t wrong after all_ , John thought muzzily, and bit.

His bottom fangs struck something hardish, and he froze even as blood dribbled over his tongue, urging him on.

“Just the spine,” Sherlock murmured. His voice was soft and thick with hunger, and oh god yeah, definitely sexual. “Your fangs can break bone easily enough. Just don’t swallow it, nor the skin or hair for that matter. Everything else your body can digest.”

It was so warm, the blood and the skin, and with a little clench of John’s jaw, the spine broke easily and his fangs sunk deeper and he couldn’t have stopped if he’d tried. Everything went pinkish and hazy, and when John came back to himself, he found Sherlock leaning even closer and petting him, actually stroking the hair at his nape, murmuring, “That’s it. Apparently I’ve misjudged you. You’re a natural.”

John pulled back, feeling blood drip down his chin and a bit of something trapped between his front teeth. As he swiped his tongue across his bottom lip, Sherlock watched avidly. His mouth was open, and although John didn’t glimpse even a hint of fang, Sherlock appeared positively starved.

“Do you want some?”

John realised only after he’d spoken how like a cheesy come-on it was, and judging by the way Sherlock’s eyes widened, he realised it too.

 _Oh fuck it_ , John thought, and kissed him.

Sherlock surged forwards immediately, turning John and driving him back into the kitchen table. The rat corpse dropped with a thud and a squish, and then there was a hand on either side of John’s face. They cupped his jaw and smeared gore along one side of it while Sherlock ate at John’s mouth with more focus and fervour than John had ever been snogged with in his life. He couldn’t keep up and eventually stopped trying, just left his lips parted and moved obligingly whenever Sherlock tired of lapping and sucking at one part and wanted another.

When they broke apart, Sherlock was trembling. His hands worst of all, where he was still touching John’s face, but John could feel an occasional shake in his knees and hear his toes curling and uncurling in his socks. Rising bloodlust, John might’ve thought, but for the lack of fangs and the sharp smell of arousal coming off him in thick cloying waves. Coming off John as well, but that was rather less interesting.

“It would be a bad idea, wouldn’t it,” John said, low, “if we just… went to your bedroom for a bit.”

Sherlock swallowed, staring at John’s mouth so hard that John could almost feel two pairs of fangs sinking into his lips. Which shouldn’t have sounded good—god, why did it sound so good; he’d never been bitten by a vampire before. “A bit?”

“A bit,” John confirmed, and was surprised when Sherlock swayed forwards and rested his forehead against John’s.

“Please.”

*

He wasn’t given the chance to second-guess himself.

The moment they made it to the bed, Sherlock was flopping onto his back and hauling John atop him, grasping John’s biceps and arching for John’s mouth. Both of them sighed into the kiss, their lower bodies slotted together. John pulled clumsily at Sherlock’s shirt, making Sherlock groan before he started removing John’s as well. He succeeded first, lifting John’s jumper over his head.

Then Sherlock swiped his fingers across John’s jaw and brought them, blood-smeared, to John’s lips. “Open.”

John couldn’t suck them into his mouth fast enough. The gore on John’s face had grown cold and partly dry, but the taste still made his thoughts go fuzzy and his vision dim. He licked the skin clean, gnawed gently at Sherlock’s nails to free the flakes of dried blood beneath them, and then just hollowed his cheeks, curled his tongue, and sucked.

Sherlock’s fingerpads were so soft, vulnerable. Just a prick of John’s fang would bring a drop of blood to the surface. Just a bite, a small one, maybe a scrape, and John could catch the weak gush with his tongue. He was only vaguely aware of Sherlock’s free hand fumbling with his zip, opening his trousers, reaching inside.

“Ohh,” said Sherlock, tugging his finger from John’s mouth, ignoring John’s noise of protest. Both hands then were free to cup John’s cock through his pants. “I knew it. Much larger than average.” He sounded deeply, deeply pleased about that.

John was ravenous. He hardly even cared about the hands caressing his prick through the thin cotton; he just wanted that finger back, the promise of blood.

Sherlock let go. “I want to see it. Show me.”

John climbed off and made quick work of undressing. Sherlock was even quicker with his own clothes and then lay regally back and waited. When they were both nude, Sherlock slid his left thumb between his parted lips. John heard the soft sound of skin being pierced and smelled the blood half a second later. The scent was more subtle than the rat or corpse had been: less pungent, more sweet.

John pitched forwards, feeling like a puppet on a string attached to Sherlock’s thumb, which Sherlock graciously held out for John. There was a fat, dark bead of blood sitting atop the pale skin. John wrapped his lips around the finger and licked the bead off.

The taste bloomed in his mouth, first only the drop on his tongue—rich and delicious, almost decadent—and then he could feel it all the way in his throat, a trail of warmth—like alcohol, or what he remembered of alcohol, but less of a burn and more of a shock—that travelled lower and lower until his prick, already hard, thickened to the point of aching.

When the blood was gone, John gave a gentle suckle, trying to draw more, but the wound had already healed.

“You can bite,” said Sherlock. His thumb skidded lightly over John’s molars, stopping just before they reached his left top fang. John shook from the effort it took to not nip, not even a little. “I don’t mind. It actually feels quite… nice.”

Then he rendered all of John’s restraint moot by using John’s fang to pierce the meat of his thumbpad. The skin split and the blood welled, a full dribble this time, and John’s control was lost. He closed his jaw, sinking his top fang deeper and piercing Sherlock’s finger with his bottom one as well, and relished the spill of blood into his mouth.

A low, pained hiss, and then John felt Sherlock’s mouth on his pectoral, dragging over his nipple. John moaned, biting harder. So sensitive, he’d never been so sensitive there. One touch and already his nipple had gone tight, a hard little pebble that Sherlock took into his mouth and flattened his tongue against. Still no fangs, although how he could be in this bed, surrounded by the scent of blood, was beyond John.

When Sherlock drew back, John followed, getting in one last lingering lick of Sherlock’s finger before it was out of reach.

“Here,” said Sherlock. “Lie down. You can have my wrist.”

Head spinning, John let himself be moved: onto his side facing away from Sherlock, with Sherlock’s arm around him and his wrist at John’s mouth. His fangs plunged into Sherlock’s flesh like a knife into cream, and the blood flowed in four thick rivers onto John’s tongue.

“Bite through the vein,” Sherlock said. “It’ll taste better.”

It did. The blood tasted darker, somehow: heavier. John could almost feel it weighing him down as he drank it in long, deep pulls, and when he paused, chasing the drops he’d spilled down Sherlock’s wiry forearm, he realised that his thoughts had grown slow and syrupy.

“Jesus,” he said. He was slurring a bit. “I feel drunk.”

Sherlock chuckled. “Hence the popularity of the blood trade. The effect on humans is even stronger. Do you want more?”

Shifting backwards, John felt Sherlock’s erection, shorter and thinner than John’s but far from unimpressive, poking into his back. The sensation, the whole situation really, struck him as funny, and he giggled even as Sherlock moaned softly and thrust weakly against him. He rocked back, encouraging another stronger thrust, followed by another.

In their bumping and rutting, their bodies moved so that Sherlock’s cock was rubbing John’s arse cheek instead, leaving a wet streak along the fleshiest bit. The fluid would be greyish in colour, John knew, and completely spermless.

 _Sherlock Holmes’s dick is leaking on your bum_ , John thought, which sparked another brief round of giggling. God, he felt good. He stretched languidly, still chuckling, and shimmied his hips until Sherlock’s prick could nudge his cheeks apart and nestle between them.

He revelled in Sherlock’s cry, Sherlock’s full-body shudder as he dropped his forehead to John’s shoulder. So much for Sherlock being somehow above the temptations of sex. What would happen if John just… shoved backwards a bit? If he eased Sherlock’s cock inside him and rocked back and forth on it? He imagined Sherlock whimpering, groaning, clutching John’s hips, and driving his fangs into John’s nape because he couldn’t stand it, he needed it.

“ _John_ ,” said Sherlock, sounding choked. “Do you—uhn, mm—do you _want more_?”

God help him, John did. John wanted to ravage Sherlock’s wrist while Sherlock ravaged John’s nape and let John drive him mad. John’s fangs were still out, the hunger still a steady pulse in his body, albeit less insistent than before.

“Fuck,” he said, wriggling his arse and making Sherlock echo the swear into his shoulder. “How can I possibly still want more?”

John could feel Sherlock’s feeble laugh against his back. “It’ll pass. In 50 or so years, you won’t need or want to feed so often.”

“So why—ah, course. Because I’m—” Another shift of their bodies, initiated by Sherlock this time, and the head of Sherlock’s cock glided wetly over his hole. “Oh, god.”

“Because you’re my child.” Sherlock sounded only slightly more composed than John. His hips gave a little stuttering thrust, pushing his cock forwards. John’s hole burned as the tip began to press inside.

“Oh, fuck.” John was going to be fucked. For the first time in his life, here in Sherlock’s bed with a belly full of blood while Sherlock called John his child, and John wanted it as much as he wanted another mouthful of blood. It was absurd, so completely mad, that John found himself chuckling again, even as he moved with Sherlock, encouraging him to carry on. He managed one low “Right, yeah—Daddy,” before he laughed even harder, expecting Sherlock to join in.

Sherlock didn’t. Too focused, apparently, on his own cock and John’s arse and moaning helplessly into John’s shoulder. “S—unh—stop. You’ll hurt yourself.”

John’s laugh broke off with a snort. “Come on, you’re not that big.”

Not only that, but Sherlock wasn’t dry. His prick had leaked so much that John could hear a quiet squidging noise as John did his best to bugger himself with the tip. Still, the tiny stretch burned. It burned, but oh god did John want it. He wanted it so badly that his legs shook and his throat felt tight and his hole clenched and clenched.

“John,” Sherlock said, more a gasp than a word. “Stop, s—turn over.”

John didn’t want to, in fact had every intention of staying right where he was, but then Sherlock added, “Turn over and you can drink from my throat.”

John rolled eagerly over, his lips already curling back to bare his fangs. He hardly needed any encouragement at all—although Sherlock provided it, stroking John’s hair and guiding his head to the join of Sherlock’s neck and shoulder—to bury his teeth into Sherlock’s soft, thick throat and suck.

Blood flooded his mouth, and he floated as he swallowed, his thoughts so slow now they had almost hardened like tree sap. When the flow weakened, he dug his fangs in deeper and heard the skin tear farther open, a noise as soft and wet as the one made by Sherlock’s cock against his hole.

“That’s it,” Sherlock was murmuring. “Go on and rip it out.”

It took a moment for that to permeate the fog in John’s mind, but when it finally did, he couldn’t let go and draw back quickly enough. “You—”

The words caught and died in his throat when he realised that a pair of hands were wrapped around his cock, gently squeezing and stroking up and down the length. _Fuck_ , he thought, groaning. How long had Sherlock been touching him like that? John didn’t know. God, he’d been so lost in feeding that he hadn’t noticed at all.

Seeming to understand he had John’s full attention now, Sherlock quickened his pace until John was moaning ceaselessly, thrusting erratically into Sherlock’s grasp.

“As long as you don’t sever my spinal column,” said Sherlock, “it won’t be a problem.”

“I—” John struggled to gather his thoughts. “Are—” Sherlock’s grip was strong, fucking hell, strong and utterly merciless. “Are you going, mm, going to rip out m-mine—oh god.” He was going to come, already. He could feel it in his spine, his testicles, even his fucking toes.

“Only when you’re ready,” Sherlock said kindly.

It was the most absurd thing John had heard yet. He laughed, amused and blood-drunk. Sherlock couldn’t be convinced to fuck him even a little, but apparently he could be convinced to rip out John’s throat.

He was still laughing, fingers clenching on Sherlock’s shoulders, when his prick jerked and spurted come all over Sherlock’s hands. The semen was significantly less thick than when he’d been human, almost watery. It splashed all over his stomach and legs and made a little puddle on the sheets beneath him.

Sherlock laid a sloppy kiss at the side of his mouth, then his chin and jaw. Cleaning off the blood, John realised after a moment. He tipped his head back and let Sherlock lick the stray drops from his neck. John was reminded oddly of a mother cat licking milk from her kitten’s face.

“Jesus,” he said. The slur in his voice was even stronger now. His tongue felt huge and unwieldy in his own mouth. “I suppose you’re a decent daddy after all.”

Sherlock drew back, his nose wrinkled. “Oh, all right, fine, I take it back. You were right, for once. I don’t like ‘daddy.’”

Of course it brought on another giggling fit. John couldn’t remember the last time he’d laughed so much, even when he’d been drunk. “Too late. It’s grown on me. I think I’ll call you Daddy all the time now. Like, hmm…. Look how hard you are, Daddy. Let me take care of it, Daddy, please?”

Sherlock rolled his eyes, but said nothing else on the subject. He only reached for John’s hand and ran his fingers over John’s, smearing John’s come on them.

“Here,” he said gruffly. “Should be slick enough if we’re quick. Ugh, I hope you’re pleased with yourself. You made me _want_ it.”

John had half a moment to think, _Right, then. Apparently I’m going to be fucked after all,_ before Sherlock brought John’s newly lubricated hands between his own legs. There was a brush of hair, a ring of tight wrinkled skin against the pad of John’s finger, and then Sherlock’s entire body stretched long with a blissful “Ahhh” as John’s forefinger slipped into his arsehole.

Sherlock was cool inside. Cool, but startlingly, irresistibly tight. John gave a gentle prod and a wiggle, trying to loosen him a bit. Sherlock’s nails dug into John’s knuckles, and two deep wrinkles appeared on his forehead.

“Stay still,” he said, teeth gritted. “I’ll move you if I want to.”

It was hotter than it had any right to be, especially when complemented by a languid roll of Sherlock’s hips, forcing John’s finger deeper as though to punctuate the command. His eyelids drooped and his lips parted. John could see his fangs, just beginning to peek out from his gums.

Right. Because John had drained some of his blood. It needed to be replenished.

“You can bite my throat,” John told him. “Not—” Another hip roll, more insistent this time, and a moan rumbled in Sherlock’s chest. John licked his lips, imagined himself in the same position if only Sherlock had followed through, the tease. “Not to rip it out or anything, but… maybe a sip or two.”

Sherlock didn’t need any more encouragement, even though it took rather a lot of contortion on his part to keep himself impaled on John’s finger while he buried his face in John’s neck. He wound up half in John’s lap, straddling John’s thigh and bent over him. He bit.

The initial pain was excruciating. A scream echoed in John’s mind, an “ungh” of hurt left his lips, and he nearly shoved Sherlock off as hard as he could. Then the pain abated, quite suddenly, when Sherlock began to drink. John felt the first suckle, the gentle suction and the rush of blood through the fang wounds, and then he began to float again.

No, that was wrong. It was more of a sinking, a sensation of being dragged underwater while he and Sherlock clung to each other. There was a pressure on John’s chest, gripping his heart and lungs. His vision swam; there was the whisper of gently lapping waves in his mind.

Then the pain returned, and John surfaced with a gasp to find that Sherlock was rutting back and forth onto his finger. The motion rocked his whole body and made his fangs, still partly buried in John’s throat, tug again and again on John’s injured skin.

Sherlock grunted with every backwards thrust, a muffled “uhhn” every time John’s knuckle kissed his rim, followed by a hearty suck on John’s throat as he thrust forwards, dragging his wet cock along John’s lower ribs. He sounded gorgeous; he probably looked even better, his skin growing flushed with fresh blood and his plump arse bouncing on John’s hand.

But as his thrusts gained more and more momentum, the sloppier his mouth and teeth got and the harder he tugged.

 _He’s going to rip out my throat after all_ , John thought, dazed. _And I’m going to let him, even though it hurts like hell, because he sounds like a beautiful, needy whore while he’s doing it._

He meant to say ‘Stop’ or ‘That hurts’ or something similar, but when John’s lips, parched and cracked now, parted, the only thing that came out was a weak, breathy “Daddy.”

Sherlock moaned, sounding completely gutted, and ripped his mouth away so quickly that John’s blood sprayed slightly before the wounds began to close. Pressing his forehead to John’s shoulder, he groped at John’s hand between his legs, pressing up painfully on the knuckles and pushing John’s finger deeper. His hips jerked once, twice, and then he let out a sharp keening wail as he tightened around John’s finger and came. His ejaculate was as thin as John’s had been, and rushed like water over John’s chest and stomach, pooling in his navel.

Even before he was finished, Sherlock was climbing off, letting John’s finger slip free. He looked like a crime scene; his chin, neck, and even bits of his chest were splotched with blood. The sight made John’s stomach clench with hunger. He rolled onto his side and huddled close, smiling when Sherlock tilted his head to let John lap at the mess.

“I don’t suppose,” he said while John licked, “I could convince you to reconsider using ‘Father’ instead?”

“Not a chance,” John mumbled into his jaw. “If there has to be some sort of... wonky paternal overtones in this relationship, then at least they’ll be kinky ones.”

Sherlock only huffed at that, then dropped his head back so John could get more easily at his neck.

*

John woke hungry, sprawled atop Sherlock’s stained and wrecked bedsheets with his head on Sherlock’s chest and one of Sherlock’s arms around his lower back. The room smelt obscenely of blood and come, and he could hear the rats in the kitchen still skittering in the cardboard box and Mrs Hudson downstairs in her own kitchen doing the washing-up and humming softly to herself.

Sherlock’s curtains were closed, as always, although thin strips of dim light were peeking out from around them. Sometime before dusk, then, perhaps around dinnertime. Or what would’ve been John’s dinnertime before, anyway.

 _So much for not sleeping during the day_ , John thought wryly. He wriggled—quite easily, as Sherlock (like most vampires) slept like, well, the dead—from under Sherlock’s arm, left the bed, and went to the bathroom.

His pubic hair was filthy and matted, and dried come flaked off his abdomen. Looking in the mirror, he saw pinkish smears all over his face and shoulders: the remnants of blood, both Sherlock’s and his own. His fangs were exposed, glinting ominously in the fluorescent light when he peeled back his lips. He leaned forwards, cocked his head from one side to the other, and spied a few spots of gore in his hair.

 _What a bloody mess_ , he thought, smirking at the little joke.

John cleaned himself as best he could in the sink and then simply stood, patting his face dry with a towel and watching himself in the mirror, thinking about what he’d just done. Having sex with Sherlock, sleeping in Sherlock’s bed. Exactly as he’d promised himself years ago—before Mary, before Moriarty even—that he wouldn’t do, no matter how strongly the thought sometimes (often) appealled.

Was this it, then? No more girlfriends, no more idle thoughts of a hypothetical second wife and children? Just him and Sherlock, friends and flatmates and now sexual partners, for the rest of eternity?

John could see it in his own expression when the full weight of that thought registered. How his eyes went a bit sharp and his jaw dropped and his shoulders lifted as though he’d taken a great heaving breath.

Eternity. All of fucking eternity. Or at least until the sun crashed into the earth and burned them all alive, or someone managed to chop off John’s head which could’ve been centuries from now. When Harry was dead and Mrs Hudson was dead, and Greg and Mike and Bill and almost every person John had ever known. When the only constants in his life were Sherlock and Mycroft and their parents, or whatever they were, and everyone else might’ve been the rats in the kitchen for how fleeting a role they played in what had become of John’s life.

 _Eternity_ , John thought. He closed his eyes and gripped the edges of the sink, feeling faint. _Oh my fucking god, I’m a vampire._

Blind panic clawed at his chest, and he found himself trying to gasp, to have a proper panic attack, but of course it accomplished nothing. He wasn’t human; he’d never experience that again.

He needed air.

He nabbed his clothes from the bedroom and threw them on on his way out, thankful that Sherlock was still dead to the world ( _quite literally_ , he thought, _just like me, just like—oh my fucking god_ ). He made it outside on the pavement without incident, although he was still covered in dried come, his trousers were unzipped, and the backs of his shoes were folded down where he’d shoved his heels hastily in.

There weren’t many people out of doors on Baker Street. A sombre couple entering Speedy’s, a group of raucously laughing teenagers across the street, a man approaching from the opposite direction whose heartbeat jumped when John marched past him. John tried to pay them little attention, although he could smell their sweat and blood and breaths and hear their weak little hearts and lungs working so tirelessly to keep them alive.

John had barely made it two blocks before his pace began to slow and then stop. In part because he realised he’d nowhere to go and the hunger would only get worse, in part because his face burned from the sunlight even though there was very little of it left, and in part because the thought of Sherlock waking alone amidst a mess of their blood and come, with the flat empty and John’s mobile still charging in the sitting room, made him feel unbearably guilty.

He’d just begun to turn around when there was a whoosh of movement and a sudden sharp jab in his neck. His knees went wobbly and everything went dark.

*

When John woke, he understood hunger.

As he blinked into consciousness, he saw concrete floors, brick walls, and a steel door and smelt dust, decay, and blood. His stomach roiled, snarled, felt as though it would grind itself to bits like a fox gnawing off its own trapped leg. Limping and oozing, muzzle stained with its own gore, and _oh_ , he thought, shuddering and aching, tonguing his fangs, _oh god_ —

“Shit.”

John jerked and found a moment of clarity. Saw the human stumbling backwards, a full blood bag in his hand, fear in his eyes. He looked familiar. Why did he look familiar?

“You’re—awake.”

John heard the tantalising blub-dub of the man’s heart quicken, smelt a sudden tang to his sweat: a siren’s call to John. The man’s eyes were wide. John spied the bloodshot white around his irises and imagined holding the tender orbs between his teeth, how they would burst and gush as he bit down. His stomach gave another horrible twist and howl, and John lurched towards the man—

—but was stopped. An itching-burning at his wrists and ankles, the creaking of wood and clanking of metal striking metal.

“Yeah, that’s right. Best not struggle, Dr Watson,” said the man. His voice wavered. “Those are silver, those are. You’ll do yourself a good deal of damage if you fight.”

Familiar voice. John squinted, cocked his head, saw. “You—” _Killed me, gutted me, got away._

“Me,” Ed Harvey said. He set the blood bag on a scratched wooden table, and John looked around, finally seeing the rest of the room: the stacks of coolers, the blood stains, the crudely set-up IV to John’s left, currently bagless and paused.

“You aren’t a harvester,” John said, lisping heavily. His fangs were longer than they’d ever been; his eyes were probably glowing.

He was hungry. Oh, god, he was hungry.

 _Stop_ , he told himself, closing his eyes. _Think. You need to get free._

“You and your ruddy detective cost me 400 litres of stock,” Harvey spat. “Drastic measures and all that.” He rummaged about on the table until he’d produced a hypodermic needle and a liquid-filled vial. “Fortunately, I know a few vamps in London. And new childe blood’s in high demand these days. You’ll make up for the loss.”

John realised he could hear the e. The note of sneering mockery, the brief lip curl of imagined superiority and condescension. John heard it and snarled.

The needle prepared, Harvey set the vial aside. “Now, cooperate with me, and I’ll be sure to return you to Holmes in one piece.”

 _Holmes_. John heard a whisper of Sherlock’s voice in his head. _‘Silver coating, I should say. Pure silver chains are exceptionally difficult to obtain.’_

Harvey shuffled nervously forwards, swallowing thickly. John watched his throat bob, saw the steady throb of his pulse beneath the skin. Imagined the delicate flesh giving between John’s jaws, the muscles and arteries tearing, the blood arcing like a fountain. Harvey hanging limp between John’s jaws, wheezing his last breaths into John’s ear: his death rattle a charming starter to a rich, flavourful meal.

_‘Never go for the throat while they’re alive. They expect it. The surprise will give you an edge.’_

John grit his teeth, gathered his strength in his limbs, and yanked hard and quick, then lunged for Harvey’s abdomen.

*

When Sherlock turned up, John was elbows-deep in Harvey’s open abdominal cavity, scooping up blood in his cupped hands and pouring it down his own throat.

John heard his approach from some distance away—his wildly flapping coat, his panicked sprint, accompanied by no pounding heartbeat or racing breaths—and then smelt the familiar bookish scent of their flat, the faint remnants of Mrs Hudson’s herbal soothers, and the stronger spice of Sherlock’s cologne.

It was enough to crack the worst haze of his bloodlust, but not quite enough to convince him to move. He was staring dumbly down at his bloodied hands, the gore beneath his fingernails, when Sherlock tore in, ripping two of the door hinges clean off in his haste.

“John.”

Relief made Sherlock’s voice soft and whispery, and when he fell to his knees and reached for John, his gloved hands were greedy. He cupped John’s jaw, angled his head this way and that while his gaze roamed, taking in every inch of John’s face. He even peeled back John’s upper and lower lips so he could examine John’s fangs. Then he followed the dark, wet blotches of blood down John’s neck to his jumper and spied where John’s left sleeve had been rolled up for the IV, which was still attached, although Sherlock took care of that in one quick swipe. John flinched as the needle was ripped out and flung to the floor.

“John?”

Sherlock touched John’s face again, and John turned his cheek into Sherlock’s palm, nuzzling the leather. The sensation and the smell calmed him, centred him, shooed the rest of the monstrous bits away until John was left with a dawning horror at what he’d just done.

“John. Are you all right?”

 _I don’t know what I am anymore_ , John thought, but no, not the time for another panic. Certainly not in front of Sherlock. He said, “I was… hungry. Actually hungry.”

Sherlock barely blinked. “Of course you were. You’d already lost blood today, and he was draining you on top of that.”

“How did you find me?”

Sherlock pursed his lips, seeming reluctant to answer, although he eventually did. “Mycroft. It—I anticipated that you would want space when you woke up. And it hadn’t even been an hour at that point. I didn’t think anything of it until Mycroft phoned.”

John frowned. Mycroft did tend to keep watch over the flat, but rarely that close of a watch. “Mycroft?”

Sherlock sat back on his haunches and began to peel off his gloves. “Yes, obviously. Now that you’re”—he smiled, darkly—“ _family_ , he’ll be taking much more of an interest in your personal safety. As you can probably imagine, he thinks poorly of my competence as a sire to a newly turned child.”

John tried to imagine a world in which Mycroft cared even half as much about John as he did Sherlock, and found that he couldn’t. “Right,” he said, “well. I’ll be sure to send _Uncle Mike_ a card, then.”

Sherlock’s lip twitched. “Be sure to address it that way.”

“Course. And I’ll sign it ‘Your loving nephew, John.’”

John was laughing by the last word. Affection swelled in his chest, burrowing every crevice, when Sherlock joined in, ducking his head so that his curls flopped down over his forehead. He licked two of his fingers and brought them to John’s face, where he swiped roughly at the side of John’s mouth.

Cleaning the blood away, John realised. As though that would do any good when his entire front was literally coated in the stuff, when his trousers and jumper were no doubt stained so badly that there’d be nothing for it but to burn his entire outfit.

“Have you eaten enough?” said Sherlock. “There are the blood bags in the flat, obviously, but if you need something more now to tide you over until we arrive....”

“The flat?” John glanced around, at the bloody wreck of a crime scene and the mutilated and partly eaten corpse in front of him. They couldn’t go back to the flat yet. The police would have to be rung; John would have to be questioned.

“Mm.” Sherlock wet his fingers again and went to work on the other side of John’s mouth. “Mycroft will send someone to deal with all this. I don’t suppose you’d serve time for killing a wanted blood smuggler in self-defence whilst being drained, but let’s avoid the court case, shall we?”

His smile, bright and fond, said he knew exactly what memory he was evoking with those words, and John found himself slumping and relaxing, letting Sherlock clean his face as best he could.

“No,” he said. “I’m—I’ll be fine until we get home.”

“Good.”

When all of John’s face and neck were damp and raw, Sherlock finally stopped and scooted backwards, unbuttoning his coat. He slipped it off and wrapped it around John, helped John put his arms in the sleeves, and began to button up the front.

“Keep your hands in the pockets,” he said when he was finished, “and we shouldn’t have any problem getting a cab.”

John snorted and let Sherlock help him to his feet. “You would know all about getting a cab whilst covered in blood.”

Sherlock’s smile was more tender than any expression John had ever seen on him. “Just a bit,” he said, voice soft. He touched the top of John’s head and ran his fingers through John’s hair. For a moment, John fully expected to be grabbed and snogged, but then Sherlock stepped away. “Right, then. Let’s go home.”

*

At the flat Sherlock made John a hot cup of blood, ushered him to the sofa, and then paced about the sitting room with his phone against his ear, hissing things into the receiver like “Don’t be ridiculous, Mycroft” and “Yes, _obviously_. Although he’d rather taken care of it himself by that point.”

When he rung off, he jabbed viciously at the button to end the call even though Mycroft was still talking (“Honestly, Sherlock, if you’d informed me immediately rather than wasting time—”) and tossed the mobile onto the desk, where it landed with a clatter and skidded across the surface. He glanced at John. Barely a glance, really, just a flicker of his gaze in the direction of the sofa before he turned away, hands rubbing together like they were cold or he didn’t know what to do with them or he was excited about something—or anxious.

 _Oh_ , John thought. _Oh, right. He’s likely had just as much of a shit night as you have, hasn’t he?_

“Come here,” he said.

Sherlock hesitated, his lip turning down as though he was honestly thinking of saying no, but John made sure his own expression put a stop to that. Sherlock shuffled over and sat a respectable distance away.

John put a stop to that as well and fairly plastered himself to Sherlock’s side, narrowly avoiding splashing his cup of blood all over them both.

“D’you want some?” John held up the cup while its contents sloshed about.

Sherlock eyed it, then John’s lips (which John licked reflexively), and shook his head. “I ate when I woke up. If I hadn’t, I’d probably have thrown myself on Harvey’s corpse and gorged myself like you did.”

John’s hackles shot up at the implication he had gorged himself, but Sherlock talked on before John could manage a word.

“Are you all right?”

John blinked. “Yeah. Well, mostly. Because of what happened tonight, you mean?”

A small shiver of restlessness passed through Sherlock’s body. John prepared himself to be shoved off, but Sherlock stayed where he was, and even raised his arm so John could scoot closer and drape himself over Sherlock’s chest if he wanted. The action was a bit stiff, as though he was terribly unsure of himself, which flooded John with immeasurable fondness.

“Tonight,” Sherlock muttered, “this afternoon, three days ago… all of the above. I don’t—” He looked away, biting his lip and giving John an excellent view of his clenched jaw. “I don’t pretend to know what it’s like. It’s been centuries since I was changed, and I asked for it. I begged for it, in fact. And there was never any chance of my relationship with my father taking on a sexual component.”

Sherlock had grown even more rigid while he spoke, until John might’ve been leaning against the trunk of a sycamore. “It’s been a bit… rough, sure,” he admitted, and grimaced when Sherlock stiffened even further. “A lot to take in at once, no time to get used to the idea, but I’ll manage. I am managing, and it’s fine. It’ll all be fine.”

Sherlock swallowed. John could hear the wet pulse of his throat muscles and had to take a judicious sip of blood to sate his sudden thirst. “So you—” Sherlock turned back, watched John clean off the blood moustache with his tongue. “You forgive me, then?”

“Forgive you?” John frowned, taken aback. “What, for changing me?”

Sherlock’s lips tightened, and his gaze dropped to John’s chest. A resounding _yes_ , in other words.

John laughed. He couldn’t help it; the question was absurd. “Sherlock, I never blamed you to begin with.”

“Ugh, of course you did. I did this to you, didn’t I?” Sherlock was practically spitting, glaring daggers at the blood stains on John’s jumper. “Took away your humanity, made you my child—”

“Yeah,” John said, “and if you honestly think I wouldn’t have done the same, you’re an idiot.”

That shut Sherlock up sufficiently. His jaw snapped closed, and a small quiver went through his lower lip.

 _Idiot_. John rolled his eyes. “I was dying, and you did the only thing you could do to stop it. I understand.”

And he did, rather intimately. He remembered all too well squinting at Sherlock’s form on the roof of Bart’s, icy fear gripping his heart and freezing him all the way to his toes when he saw the glint of the knife in the sunlight. And then: Sherlock’s bloodied head on the pavement and his body a short distance away, or what had seemed to be Sherlock’s anyway. John would have done anything in that moment—and any moment in the next two years that followed, really—to save him, whether Sherlock wanted it or not.

Some hint of his thoughts must’ve shown on his face—oh, who was he kidding, of course they did, this was Sherlock—because Sherlock’s eyes went warm with affection and his lips softened in something like a pout. He wound his arm around John’s shoulders and cradled John against him, his mouth flattening John’s fringe to his forehead. This time when the blood sloshed, a drop or two spilled and dripped down over his fingers.

To John’s surprise, Sherlock was the one who wiped it away, uttering a quiet sound of annoyance. Covering John’s hand with his own, he tipped the cup towards John’s lips. “You have to drink faster,” he said. “Ugh, it’s already cold. Soon it’ll start to clot.”

It had already started to clot, actually, but John didn’t mind. It was like the juicy bits in orange juice.

John emptied the cup, then let Sherlock take it and set it on the coffee table. When that was out of the way, he returned to cradling John against him, stroking John’s hair and nape in a way that was simultaneously soothing and exciting.

“You should clean up,” he said. “We should probably burn your clothes just to be safe.”

John allowed himself to be drawn closer, until he could nuzzle Sherlock’s suprasternal notch, sighing in contentment. When he eventually spoke, his voice was muffled by Sherlock’s shirt. “Probably, yeah. Bed after, then, maybe? So I don’t turn into one of the useless stereotypes who only wake when the sun goes down?”

Sherlock’s chest rose and fell sharply as he snorted. “All right.”

Then, to be absolutely certain they were on the same page, John said, “Your bed, yeah?”

Sherlock went still. Utterly, eerily still, like a non-vampire corpse. Not a bad sign, necessarily. He did the same when he was happily ensconced in his mind palace.

John remained where he was, although he did give another nuzzle, a bit lower this time: nudging one of the buttons on Sherlock’s shirt with his nose. On a whim, he closed his teeth around it, being sure not to catch his fangs (which were peeking only slightly out from his gums) on the fabric, and tugged gently.

That snapped Sherlock out of it. His arms tightened around John like he meant to fuse the two of them permanently together, and he pressed a firm, lingering kiss to the top of John’s head.

“My bed,” Sherlock said into John’s hair. “Yes, precisely.”


End file.
